As you can see, lacquered ceilings can also help mask architectural disparities in a room [notice how your eye doesn’t immediately take notice thelack of symmetry in the wall openings in the room above ] and lacquered ceilings can also foreshorten the perspective of long narrow rooms by focusing your eye upwards towards the color and light.

DesignerJeffrey Bilhuberfrequently uses lacquered ceilings in his design work. The example below shows you a room as it appears on Mr. Bilhuber’s own site, a closeup and as it appears as photographed in Elle Decor magazine.

Lacquered ceilings can also help smaller, lower ceilinged rooms appear taller, more expansive and glamorous. The room below was completed for a previous Kips Bay Showhouse by James Aman and Anne Carson, who also designed philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau’s Palm Beach penthouse, featured in Architectural Digest.

A lacquered ceiling is 100% more expensive than even a beautifully finished 100% oil based paint ceiling, though, due to the difficulty of application, but, for those who can afford it, it is the ne plus ultra in luxurious glamour for interiors.

However, smart designers, when working within a tighter budget, as designers often have to do when working on showhouses or second homes, find innovative solutions, like NYC’s Philip Gorrivan did in his often photographed bedroom below for a past Kips Bay Showhouse – that many thought contained a lacquered ceiling.

As Mr. Gorrivan explained in this interview with theNew York Timesbelow, the bedroom pictured above contained a stretched ceiling product, that gives the illusion of a lacquered ceiling!

At this year’s Architectural Digest Home Show in NYC, this company:http://nyceilings.com, that sells Extenzo stretched ceilings, took home an ASID Metro NY award for a *Top Pick.*

Here are a 3 screenshots from their portfolio of work for their clients, in the commercial arena, as these stretched ceilings are both acoustically helpful in larger commercial spaces and useful for hiding and incorporating lighting fixtures and air conditioning vents, as shown in the 3rd close up below.

However, if you have the budget, nothing will ever take the place of the gorgeous, light reflecting yet slightly watery sheen of a true hand painted lacquered ceiling, as shown in the last 3 rooms on this post: the living room of Phoebe Howard‘s own home in Jacksonville, Florida, { another home she designed is on this month’s cover of Traditional Home magazine }, a bedroom designed by Ellie Cullman of Cullman Kravisin New York and the final picture, a dining room designed by Beth Webb Interiors.

Hadley Court readers, of all the rooms on this post, which one is your favorite? Please let us know in the comments and, if you’re interested in commissioning a luxury lacquered ceiling for your own home, please contact Leslie Hendrix Wood at Chancellor Interiors in Midland, Texas.